Århus by night (1989)

A motley crew of kids are making a movie. 1970's Århus: free (?) love and dingy bars. The director is a young man who still lives with his parents. The making of the movie is a messy affair: friendship is threatened by jealousy and the big question seems to be who gets to sleep with whom. Nils Malmros, if I have understood it correctly, has built his career around making deeply biographical movies. Thinking about the biographical element of Århus by night is mostly, for me, thinking about what kind of perspective it gives expression to. The director (who is clearly supposed to be Malmros himself) is presented as a shy guy to whom all the girls are drawn. The film zones in on his inhibitions, his shyness - he is the talented film-maker whose kindness is exploited by his rambunctious pals. What ensues: a rather conventional, male-focused film about sexual awakening. The women in the film mostly serve as props for male attention, desire and jealousy. This conventional story about the kid's artistic and spiritual development mostly takes its departure from the idea that the world revolves around men whose ego are dependent on women who desire them and men who admire them. And then there is the mother: the young man has a special relationship with his mom and the film dwells on the rocky road from mommy's arms to another girls'. // Århus by night is not an awful film. Its locations - a Danish small-town - is gorgeously filmed and some scenes about the travails of making the film end up being quite funny. At times, the usage of memories that haunt the adult works pretty nicely. But much too often, this film falls into the trap of a very, very tiresome image of what it is to Be a Man.